The invention seeks to offer the user a means that is easy simple to use and achieves reliable results, to enable the user to pass a thread into the eye of a sewing needle, which may be either a needle for hand sewing or a sewing machine needle, for straight or zig-zag stitching for instance, or even a needle of an embroidery machine.
Innumerable means for this use have already been proposed, from the simplest, such as a flexible metal loop that engages the eye of a needle and into the opening of which the thread to be threaded is passed and then pulled through the eye, removing the loop from it, to the most complicated, in particular including injectors and pneumatic suction devices that in the first case enable propelling the thread through the eye with jets of compressed air and in the second case aspirating such a thread through the eye. U.S. Pat. No. 4,381,021 shows a contrivance of this type.
Other constructions, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,707,448; 2,910,029; and 4,651,660, or British Patent 1,184,085, for example, intended more particularly for sewing machines, make use of the most various mechanical means, in particular employing a hook intended to instantaneously extend through the eye of the needle to grasp a thread and thread it into it by displacement of the hook in a direction opposite the direction in which it passed into the eye.
Even though they have an often complicated structure, these constructions all have the same defect: None of them enable the user to "feel" whether the hook is passing freely through the opening of the eye or contrarily, for instance if it is slightly creased inadvertently or if the needle has been deformed or poorly positioned in its support apparatus, it may abut against the body of the needle and threaten to further deteriorate it, or even break it, if the threading procedure continues.
Moreover, contrivances of sufficiently simple and reliable function and structure that can be used with certainty even by persons who are visually handicapped and/or are handicapped in their motor abilities are not yet known at present. This is equally true for threading needles for hand sewing and for sewing machine needles.